Publication Type

Editorial

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

7-2020

Abstract

Corporate governance is an important topic for both scholars and practicing managers. To date, most work on this subject has focused on how to resolve potential conflicts of interest between a firm’s senior managers and its shareholders in how firms create and distribute economic value. Work on using governance to resolve possible conflicts between senior managers and shareholders has largely developed separately from governance questions focused on the broader relationships between a firm and its multiple stakeholders.This is ironic since some of the earliest work on agency theory conceptualized a firm as “a nexus for a set of contracting relationships among individuals” (Jensen & Meckling, 1976: 310). These individuals, including “individuals” as legal fictions, can be viewed as a firm ’s stakeholders. However, instead of examining how governance could enable a firm to work with all of its stakeholders in creating and distributing economic value, agency theorists have mostly focused on governing the relationship between managers and only a single stakeholder: shareholders. An idea whose time has come is that of considering more directly the governance of relations between a firm and its multiple stakeholders and not just with its shareholders.

Keywords

Corporate governance, stakeholder governance

Discipline

Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics | Strategic Management Policy

Research Areas

Strategy and Organisation

Publication

Academy of Management Review

Volume

45

Issue

3

First Page

499

Last Page

503

ISSN

0363-7425

Identifier

10.5465/amr.2020.0181

Publisher

AMA

Embargo Period

7-1-2021

Copyright Owner and License

Publisher

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2020.0181

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